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James Whitcomb Riley Festival Scholarship Endowment

James Whitcomb Riley Festival Scholarship Endowment

James Whitcomb Riley (October 7, 1849 – July 22, 1916) was an American writer, poet, and best-selling author. During his lifetime he was known as the Hoosier Poet and Children’s Poet for his dialect works and his children’s poetry respectively. His poems tended to be humorous or sentimental, and of the approximately one thousand poems that Riley authored, the majority are in dialect. His famous works include “Little Orphant Annie” and “The Raggedy Man”.

Riley began his career writing verses as a sign maker and submitting poetry to newspapers. Thanks in part to an endorsement from poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, he eventually earned successive jobs at Indiana newspaper publishers during the latter 1870s. Riley gradually rose in prominence during the 1880s through his poetry reading tours. He traveled a touring circuit first in the Midwest, and then nationally, holding shows and making joint appearances on stage with other famous talents.

Riley became a bestselling author in the 1890s. His children’s poems were compiled into a book and illustrated by Howard Chandler Christy. Titled the Rhymes of Childhood, the book was his most popular and sold millions of copies. As a poet, Riley achieved an uncommon level of fame during his own lifetime. He was honored with annual Riley Day celebrations around the United States and was regularly called on to perform readings at national civic events. He continued to write and hold occasional poetry readings until a stroke paralyzed his right arm in 1910.

Although popular in his day, modern critics rate Riley as a minor poet, citing the quality of his work and his lack of serious subject matter as their reasons. Riley’s chief legacy was his influence in fostering the creation of a mid-western cultural identity and his contributions to the Golden Age of Indiana Literature. Along with other writers of his era, he helped create a caricature of mid-westerners and formed a literary community that produced works rivaling the established eastern literati. There are many memorials dedicated to Riley, including the James Whitcomb Riley Hospital for Children.

The scholarship endowment was created by Greenfield, Indiana’s Riley Festival Board of Directors to honor a Hancock County graduating senior.

Applicants must be a graduating senior of a Hancock County school. See guidebook for a complete list of requirements.